


Hallucinate Me

by Mnojick



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:22:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21571726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mnojick/pseuds/Mnojick





	Hallucinate Me

No, it really happened. John can still hear Sherlock’s voice, broken and ragged and out of breath. He vividly remembers how fiercely he came after hearing the words, unable to believe what Sherlock had said. Everything they did last night was fucking incredible. John lifts his hand to his nose and smells his fingers. He finds the scent of Sherlock there, slightly muskier and headier than usual, but, after all, nothing but Sherlock.

### Chapter Text

_I can go to med school,_ John thinks. _Dad’s agreed to selling the house._

John sits on his bed, leaning against the wall. It’s the spot where Harry always used to sit, but now that she’s not here anymore, he takes her place sometimes. It’s almost eleven, the street lamp casts a faint light through the curtain. He still can’t believe that he and his mum got the letter from his dad’s lawyer, informing them that he consents to selling the house.

John can’t sleep. He can’t even lie down. His mind is whirling — they’ll move out of the house and into a smaller flat. And in one year’s time, he won’t even live in that other flat with his mum anymore, but in some kind of flat share or student residence, somewhere away from here. He doesn’t have to apply for the army. He’s not going to be a soldier in order to become a doctor.

He searches for the photographs of Sherlock in the small crack between his bed’s frame and the mattress where he usually hides them. They’re not there, but on the floor underneath the bed instead; he must have forgotten to put them back. They’re soft from touching, the corners dog-eared, bends broken into rough white lines. He strokes the pads of his fingers across them, across the picture of Sherlock lying in the sand, his face just small enough to be covered by John’s thumb.

_ Hey, Sherlock. I’m not going to sign up for the army. Not going to play the hero and get shot at, as you feared. _

John swallows, hard. After a while he stuffs the pictures back into their hiding place in the bed frame and gets up. His stomach feels like falling as he pulls aside the curtains of his bedroom window; he watches the night sky for a long time. Opening the window, he inhales the cool air. He tries to ignore the outlines of the houses, identical siblings to the one he lives in, the street lights and the low noise of a car in the distance. Instead he imagines the Atlantic Ocean covering and quietening it all.

Over the course of the next days, everything that has been on hold since John came back from France suddenly speeds up. His mum’s colleague and his wife are back for another viewing of their house. The woman isn’t pregnant anymore, but carries her sleeping newborn in her arms, whispering softly into its tiny ear whenever it stirs. Their faces light up as they wander from room to room. They still want to buy the house, and as it turns out, they want to buy it quickly. John realises that they must have talked during the past months, his mum and the couple, because all the negotiating is already done. They even have the money ready. John’s mum takes a few days off to settle things with the bank and the lawyer, and spends long hours in the evening double-checking the contract, which arrives covered in notes from her solicitor. John almost isn’t surprised anymore when she tells him she had started to visit flats to move in while John and Harry were in France.

By mid-October, she takes John to see a flat that is for sale. She told him that she's visited this one a few times by now, has had a number of talks with the agent. John knows that she likes it, that it’s the best one she's found so far, and that the price is reasonable. It’s a two-bedroom place on the third floor, just a few streets from where they live now. It’s freshly painted, white, bright, newer than the block Harry lives in. It’s nice, John thinks, nice in a way for other people to live here. He tries to imagine their sofa in the living room, his bed in the small bedroom that would be his, his posters on the wall. He’s struck by the realisation that it wouldn’t feel like home. When his mum asks what he thinks about it, he gives a nod nonetheless. She watches him for a moment, nods back, and tells the agent that they’ll buy the flat.

The agent smiles. “Very well,” the man says with the glee of bringing a sale to the close. “We'll instruct the solicitors on both sides. With a bit of luck, the flat will be yours by the first of November.”

John turns and meets his mum’s gaze, his eyes wide. Somehow he didn’t expect it all to happen so quickly; he thought he’d have more time to get used to the idea of leaving the house he grew up in. _ That’s too soon, Mum, I don’t know if I’m ready, I— That’s — what, not even three weeks? _

“That’s perfect, yes,” his mum says with a truly relieved smile. The agent and she talk a few more minutes about the details of the purchase. When John and his mum finally leave the flat, she leans closer to him and says, “John, I don’t mean to rush, but — the earlier the better. Daniel and his wife would like to be in by the middle of November, so we should get in here during the autumn holidays.”

She sounds happy, but tired. Suddenly John sees how much energy this must have cost her without him even noticing, without even guessing that she was preparing for this. She must have spent entire months arranging to sell their house and to buy a new flat, getting everything ready in case John’s dad finally agreed — just to save time, to save money, for _him._ The talk she'd had with his dad when John ran into him can’t have been the first one, maybe just the final one. She'd probably been trying since May, when Daniel and his wife visited their house for the first time. Maybe even longer than that.

They walk back to their house. All the way home, John tries to think of something he could say, and he gets more impatient with himself with every moment. He should say that he’s glad, show her that he’s grateful. The truth is that he isn’t as happy as he thought he’d be. Isn’t this what he always wanted? To sell the house, get rid of the mortgage that is bleeding them out, move to a cheaper flat, and go to med school, become a doctor? He always wanted this. _This,_ he thinks, _and Sherlock._

But he can’t tell his mum — that he’s too heartbroken to be happy and that there’s just hollow relief when he thinks about med school. His mum is watching him, and he’s as uncomfortable as he used to be as a child when he’d been caught lying, or had kept things from her. Only now it’s not about a new jacket he lost at school or her favourite mug he’d broken when he used it, knowing perfectly well he wasn’t allowed. It’s about the fact that all her efforts can’t make up for the pain he has inside him. He takes a deep breath, chest and stomach tight with guilt and worry, and forces himself to ask something.

“Will Harry help us move, do you think?”

She smiles, and immediately relief starts to loosen the knot in John’s gut. “I think she will.”

They spend the next evenings together, sitting at the kitchen table after he’s finished his homework. They plan the move and they calculate — so far, John had only had a vague idea about what selling the house would mean in numbers. Mostly and most importantly it means getting rid of the mortgage. Since his mum is going to buy the new flat with her share of the money, it means that she won’t have to pay rent afterwards. Her salary will, for the first time in years, be enough. There’ll be enough money left for John to pay for a place while he’s at med school and to afford to live, and after years of not having enough money it’s suddenly weird to talk about sums this high. Ten thousands of pounds, just for him. He watches how his mum splits this large amount into smaller ones, small portions that form his future monthly budget: the money he’ll need to rent a room, per month, per year, for five years; the money he needs to buy food, clothes, books, to pay for electricity the telephone, and public transport. She divides it neatly, and in the end, John finds himself with a _finance plan._

He feels dizzy and overwhelmed after those talks, so he goes for a run almost every night. It’s only when he comes back exhausted and lies in bed that the new reality starts to sink in. His distant daydreams and hopes for the future are turning into things they can actually _do._ But it requires more planning and thinking and work than he’d been able to picture beforehand. He barely has any time to think of Sherlock.

On Saturday John calls Harry. He needs to hear her voice, he needs her contagious joy and her enthusiasm. Talking to her, the prospect of selling the house and going to med school starts to feel more real. For the first time, happiness and anticipation settle as a small pool of warmth inside him, like drinking a cup of hot tea after being out in the icy grey cold of sadness for far too long. With her new job, Harry can’t take a day off yet, but she promises to come to Winchester the weekend before John’s exams to help them pack, and she’ll be there the first weekend of the holidays, when they start moving.

After John hangs up he sits on the small bench under the staircase for a while. He listens to the water pipes and the way the heating creaks occasionally; the low, indistinct heartbeat of the house. His mum is sorting through things in the attic, just a distant rummaging noise. It’s quiet after talking to Harry, after hearing her laughter and answering all her rapidfire questions. It was good, but he misses Sherlock more than he has all week. It’s like putting too much strain on a healing wound, almost breaking the thin new skin that has just started to cover the bare flesh. He wants to tell Sherlock about med school more than anyone else. He wants him to be enthusiastic about this new future. It could be theirs, this future, if Sherlock only chose it. John wants to hear him talk about London, and he wonders what ideas Sherlock would come up with, which med schools he’d suggest.

But John hasn’t heard from him, and at this point, he doesn’t expect a reply to his letter anymore. He exhales and rises to his feet, heading away from the spot where he sat calling all of London’s public schools like an idiot. Now that he’s got his life in his own hands again, now that he can go to med school, he has the faint hope that he can, somehow, adjust to being without Sherlock. He hopes that he can move on, although he has no idea how exactly. Maybe he’ll just make it through life like this — work hard, finish his A-levels, go to med school and work hard again. Be a doctor and work hard to be the best and to keep himself from thinking about and missing and loving Sherlock. Accept the fact that he’ll never feel whole again, and that he’ll never stop missing Sherlock and missing the sea.

_ I’ve left a part of myself in France, and I brought a part of the sea and of the campsite back here, inside me. I brought a longing for the sea back here, I brought Sherlock with me, every memory I have of him. I came back a different person. _

This thought holds bittersweet comfort at the same time it makes him so sad he doesn’t know how to breathe. He swallows and rushes upstairs, taking two stairs at a time. In his room he slumps down in the chair at his desk to study, until his shoulders are in knots and his head aches, until he’s too tired to think. Then he puts on his trainers and runs in the cool October air that smells of wet leaves and rain.

Mostly John sleeps better these days, now that he’s more exhausted, now that there are more things to do. But there are nights when he still lies awake in the early hours, until he touches himself and coaxes his body into a post-orgasmic state of sleep. One morning in the week before the exams, both enthusiasm and discipline have loosened their grip on John after a restless night. The lack of sleep lets his thoughts stray, and he sits in his maths class, staring at the blank page in front of him. He’s tired, his eyes burning. He rubs them, blurring the white paper divided into squares by thin light-grey lines and dissolving the equation waiting for him into meaningless letters and numbers. He should concentrate on maths, the test is just a week away. But instead, he squeezes his eyes shut and suddenly all he can think of is that seven weeks ago Sherlock had fucked him. Unable to take the next breath, he shakes his head. The thought of sex with Sherlock is outrageously misplaced, here in his classroom at school. He’s so shaky he expects to feel tears pressing behind his eyes, but there’s just a desperate laugh that gets stuck in his throat. Opening his eyes, he takes a look around at his classmates, some murmuring to themselves as they hack numbers into their calculators, some writing quickly, pencils scratching on the paper. What the fuck is he even doing here? What sense does it all make?

He doesn’t have an answer, and in all the weeks of being back home, he hasn’t found one. So he lets the question hover in his mind as if it was put there just to make him feel miserable. He takes a deep breath and forces his thoughts in a different direction. So he doesn’t have a boyfriend, but he’s in love with a boy, he’s had sex with a boy, and he’s still bi. Is he the only queer in his year, in his school? He can’t be, statistically. He thinks of everyone he knows at school. Who might be gay or bi or whatever else there is? One or two come to John’s mind, but he can’t tell. He didn’t even see that Harry’s gay, and he knows her well. Or maybe he just hadn't been ready to understand that Harry’s queer, who knows. He sure as hell can’t ask anyone about it.

Suddenly John is very aware of the fact that he’s bisexual, as if it was as obvious as his blond hair. A fine shimmer of brightness pierces the fog that divides the harsh outside world from everything that’s going on inside him. Although it doesn’t lift the heavy greyness filling him, he thinks that, yes, he did come back from France a different person. Now he knows and accepts that he’s into both boys and girls. Thinking about his classmates once again, he tries to pinpoint which ones attract him. But it’s futile, because no-one does. There’s no-one he even wants to think about like that. He exhales and instead of searching for attraction, he tries to see something else — the beauty in people. Sometimes it’s there, caught in a special kind of smile, in the elegance of gesturing hands, the long slim bow of an eyebrow or the curve of a bottom lip, and it’s not related to gender or sex, just to — people. To the way they are, not what they are. He sighs. In the end he’s no wiser than he was before — there are girls who catch his eye, and there are boys who do. But no-one comes close to Sherlock, and John would do anything to have him back. He’s queer and heartbroken, he can’t tell anyone about it; as far as he knows, there’s no-one who’d understand. It’s a fucking new brand of loneliness.

On Friday evening, a few days later, John has a bowl of corn flakes for dinner, too lazy to prepare something proper while his mum is at work. He mentally goes through next week’s exams and their plans to move into the flat as soon as the holidays start. He’s going to see Bill later on; Nick, a boy from their class, is having a birthday party. John doesn’t want to stay out long, he has to revise for the exams all weekend. Actually he doesn’t want to go at all, but for the last six weeks he's barely been out with his friends.

Tomorrow Harry will be here and will help their mum sort through the countless things in the house, start packing. John wishes Sherlock was here, too, deducing everything about John’s childhood from the living room decorations and the wallpaper in his bedroom. Sherlock would make him laugh, and neither the exams nor moving house would feel difficult anymore, the fucking pain of missing Sherlock would be gone.

John is putting the empty bowl into the sink when suddenly his stomach tumbles into panicky freefall — he can't recall the exact sound of Sherlock’s voice. Its nuances depending on Sherlock’s mood have begun to fade into a blur, and John can’t pull them back into his consciousness. The spoon drops into the metal sink with a small shrill sound. John doesn’t notice, because now that he's realised about Sherlock's voice, he finds that even more memories are dissolving. What did the space between Sherlock’s hairline and the middle of his forehead look like, and what was the pattern of the freckles on his shoulders?

Is this how the healing of heartbreak is traded — ease the pain in exchange for giving up on the precious, unique details about the person who broke your heart in the first place? Hand over the exact emotional circumstances of the joy you’ve felt so the sorrow and hurt can be soothed? John had rather the pain turn chronic, feel it until his dying day than forget anything about Sherlock. But it seems not to be his decision to make.

He turns and leans against the counter, trying to breathe more slowly. He focuses on the memory of Sherlock’s hands on him, recalling the way he felt when they touched. He thinks of the night Sherlock showed him Noctiluca scintillans. He still remembers _that_ and he vows to himself, angry at himself and his flawed memory, that he’ll never forget it. Not for a single second when he’s awake, not for a single second when he’s asleep.

John calms down a bit, enough to function and to go on with this useless evening, but he remains shaken and the feeling of loss drags him down. The last few nights haven't been good. There’s a lot of pressure — the exams are coming closer and he can’t escape the obligation to start packing or at least to sort through the things in his room. His great plan to overcome his heartbreak by focusing on his A-levels and med school proves to be more difficult than he’d thought. Work, as it turns out, is even harder when you don’t have much hope in you. John feels like he's failing at his goals, and right now, he feels like he’s losing Sherlock all over again. John’s forced to witness Sherlock fade from the one place where he thought he’d always have him safe — from his heart, and from the treacherous, insecure sanctuary of his memory.

Reluctantly John changes into a fresh t-shirt and puts on his grey hoodie. He brushes his teeth, combs wet fingers through his hair and picks up Sherlock’s discman as he grabs his keys to leave the house. Walking through light misty rain that gathers strength the longer the walk to Bill’s place takes, John listens to Sherlock’s CD as loud as he can take it. The force of the familiar songs both kills and feeds the feeling of missing Sherlock.

The moment John and Bill arrive at Nick’s party, he knows that coming here was a bad idea. He takes a quick glance around the living room where the party seems to be happening. He knows everybody here — a few people from his year and from his rugby team, mostly boys, so far. There’s loud rap music, too aggressive for John’s taste making him even more stressed. Nick grins over the noise of the bass and hands John and Bill a beer each. Nick’s parents are divorced, too, and his mum is gone for the weekend. John has no idea if she knows about this party, but just like everyone else, he leaves his wet shoes on as he walks into the living room. Leaning against a bookshelf and watching the others, he thinks that he doesn’t want to be here, and that he doesn’t want to talk to any of them. They don’t know anything about him anymore, and the idea of telling them feels tempting and shocking at the same time. John remembers Harry’s words — that he shouldn’t tell the idiots at school if he doesn’t want to. But who are the idiots, and who’s worth confiding in? And would it change anything after all?

John wishes he was at the campfire. John misses them all now: Harry, Gemma, Arnel, Eddie and James, even the French girls and all those people he knew without ever having talked to them. That shifting, changing group of young people that had gathered each night at the dune.

_ A bunch of strangers thrown together for less than three weeks, and they’re the pinnacle of having fun now? I’m fucking pathetic, _ John thinks. Quickly he finishes his beer and walks to the kitchen to get another one. More people keep coming, two girls start to dance and someone turns up the volume. John and Bill watch them, wordlessly sipping on their bottles.

A few times, Bill tries to get a conversation going, but John is annoyed and he lets it show. The beer isn’t strong enough to keep his frustration at bay. So when he spots a deserted bottle of wine on a sideboard, he takes it. He’s behaving like an arsehole tonight, and he’s drinking too much, too fast. Now, all he wants — of the limited range of things that he actually can do — is to get drunk, and to stop thinking, to stop missing Sherlock, to stop losing him again.

He banishes every thought of the work he has to do for the exams from his head and offers a swig to Bill, too. But Bill just shakes his head and goes back to watching the people in Nick’s living room. When John can’t stand the music anymore, he nods at the terrace door and leaves. Bill follows him outside. The noise of the party falls flat in the garden’s cold darkness. The wind and gushes of rain blow wet leaves across the lawn in small gusts.

Another group of people stumbles outside and onto the narrow terrace. They smoke cigarettes and pass around a bottle of vodka, and John takes a pull on that too, when it's offered. While the taste of red wine reminds John of the easiness at the campfire and of his friends, the vodka takes him back to the bar at the campsite, to the night he’d got drunk after Sherlock told him about his crush on Kurt Cobain. There’s the same helplessness festering inside him and with every passing moment, it gets closer to anger.

John asks one of the girls for a cigarette. She smiles, lets her gaze linger and bats her eyelashes. Finally, she hands him a cigarette and her lighter. But John meets only Bill’s eyes as he takes the first drag, exhaling grey smoke into the cold air.

“Whoa, John, didn’t know you smoked,” Bill says.

After weeks of not smoking, the cigarette tastes bitter. It stings in his chest, but its edge is already blunt from the alcohol. John suppresses the urge to cough.

“Yeah. I do. Sometimes. Problem?”

The girl who gave him the cigarette looks at him with her wide blue eyes and nods at the vodka bottle in her hand. John takes it and again takes a gulp. A drop of vodka runs down his chin and he wipes it off, feeling mocked by it, then has another swig. The alcohol burns down some of the turmoil inside him.

“John, fuck, are you in a hurry? Why are you drinking that fast?” Bill asks. His usual easiness starts to dwindle, there’s a tone of impatience and worry to his voice.

“Why are you bothered?” John sounds exactly as pissed off as he feels, and it gives him a feeling of deep satisfaction. At the same time, it makes him hate himself.

“What’s wrong with you, John?” Bill looks at John sternly, the whites of his eyes bright in the darkness. His skin is almost as dark as the night around them, and smooth-looking in the low light from the living room.

“What the fuck is wrong with _you_?” John hisses back. Now, surprise and anger flicker in Bill’s eyes.

_Shit,_ John thinks, and all of a sudden, the spin of the alcohol makes him nauseous. When Bill’s gaze drops to the vodka bottle John is still holding, John hands it back to the girl, and she leaves the two of them hastily.

“Since the holidays you’re not the same. Just thought I’d ask,” Bill says, turning to stand next to John and facing the dark garden. He doesn’t leave though. John is grateful for that and closes his eyes for a moment. He’s exhausted by weeks of frustration and pain, and he's done a good job of getting drunk tonight; the world is swaying around him. He’s a ship out on the stormy sea, its load pulling it deep into the towering waves, too far out on the ocean.

The inkling of the fact that he felt something for Sherlock had pulled him down just the same. John remembers that night, after Sherlock had whispered that one sentence to him at the campfire — when he told him about his crush on Kurt Cobain which had led John to the inevitable conclusion that Sherlock was attracted to men, that he might be gay, that he possibly was into John, and that John was—

John takes a sharp breath. He can’t make the same mistake again, and it’s not too late to somehow stop it. He’s going to handle it differently from how his father did. His dad got drunk whenever he was scared, he’d got drunk so much that in the end their family broke apart.

Bill puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his elbow touching John’s arm. Bill doesn’t pull away, as if he was saying, _Talk, you idiot. I’m not going to walk away from you._

John drags on the cigarette the way Sherlock showed him, inhaling fresh air with it so he doesn't cough. He watches the smoke he exhales vanish in the wet air, and finally stumbles into saying, “Listen, Bill, I’m — I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit of a dickhead lately, I guess.”

The night air tastes fresh and good, like the opposite of the mess inside John. The fact that Bill is more sober than he is, that Bill wasn’t with them in France, that he’s a part of John’s life as it used to be before any of this happened — suddenly this grounds John, comforts him. It secures John like an anchor would, holding him in this spot that he knows and protecting him from being pulled out to the endless sea and under its waves.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Bill says quietly. “What’s happened, John? I mean I can see that you’re not okay.”

_ No, I’m not, Bill. I’m not even sure what I can do to be okay again, ever. _ John is nervous and too drunk. He rakes his trembling fingers through his hair, the rain’s cold dampness clinging to it.

“I fell in love. During the holidays. I think I — God, fuck.” He pulls on the cigarette again and exhales a shaky laugh. It’s too much for him without Sherlock. “Think I had my fucking heart broken.”

The world is spinning faster, his chest constricted with tar and smoke.

Bill turns his head, and catches John’s gaze. “Shit, mate. ‘M'sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

John looks into Bill’s dark eyes for a moment longer than necessary. They’re almost black in the darkness, with long, curved lashes. He looks good, John has to admit. He looks at Bill’s cheekbones, at his nose, broad and upturned. It always gives John the impression that Bill’s about to say something funny and is already chuckling about it to himself. Which isn’t wrong, in most cases. Bill’s fun.

But now Bill’s lips are pressed together tense, hiding, as John knows, bright white and very straight teeth. Out of the hazy despair John has been battling ever since he realised that he’s forgetting Sherlock, he wonders what it might feel like to lean in and kiss Bill. He wonders what it would be like to press his own lips to Bill’s, inhale the scent of his skin until Bill opens his lips and John can lick against those fucking white teeth.

John sucks in a deep breath, feeling nausea rise like a wave. He could slap himself. _Fuck — I’m too drunk, I’m far, far too drunk._

He thinks of Sherlock, and now the memory of him is so strong that it pushes aside this unasked-for image of kissing Bill. _Definitely still in love with Sherlock,_ John thinks wryly, heart beating quickly.

John watches the vodka bottle being handed round the small group next to them, hears their shrieks of laughter as they finally make their way back to the party inside. He looks at the wet grass in the darkness, and waits until the feeling of needing to throw up subsides.

“Bill?”

_I’ll tell him, _ John decides. _ I’m so tired of being alone, of hiding, and of running away. I don’t want to deal with this shit all on my own anymore. _

“Yeah?”

“I — it wasn’t a girl. You know. Who I fell in love with.”

For a while, Bill doesn’t say anything, just looks at the dark garden stretching out from where the terrace ends. John feels him shift from one foot to the other, but their elbows are still touching, he’s still close. Finally Bill lifts his head, and says without turning to John, “That sounds as if you’re not together… anymore?”

“Split up,” John says, almost voicelessly. His head is a too-heavy weight on his shoulders.

Bill takes a breath, lets it out again, a white puff of air against the dusky autumn night.

“John, he’s a fucking idiot to let you go.”

Bill gently nudges his shoulder against John’s, and doesn’t pull back afterwards. John exhales and huffs a quiet laugh. He’s so relieved his knees feel like water.

“I don’t know him, do I?” Bill asks.

John swallows. “No, I met him in France. He lives in London.”

“What’s he like?”

John looks up, he didn’t expect Bill to ask this. He thinks for a moment, then comes up with, “Shit, Bill, he’s… he’s clever. He has great taste in music.” Lifting his cigarette in explanation, he adds, voice rough, “He smokes.”

“Figured that much,” Bill says, smiling.

The cigarette is almost down to the filter. John pulls on it once more and drops it, then grinds the butt onto the grey stone floor of the terrace. He watches his trainers, wet, a fallen leaf sticking to the side of his left shoe. He’s trying to find the right words for the next thing he feels he should say, the thing that demonstrates that he is, in fact, attracted to boys. John clears his throat.

“He looks really, uh, good. I mean he’s tall and everything. Handsome.”

_ He’s got the most beautiful eyes and lips and he’s an amazing kisser, and when he touches me, I melt, and I miss him so much I don’t know how to breathe without him. _

“You’re gay then, John?” Bill asks, now looking at him. The look in Bill’s eyes is curious, but no different from how he’d always looked at John.

“I — well, I’m still in love with him and we’ve been… together, but I didn’t fake anything, back with my girlfriends. I think I’m bi. Into both, you know.” John shrugs awkwardly.

“Okay.” Bill tilts his head, weighing this bit of information. “Cool.”

Another small laugh escapes John, and with it a ton of weight is lifted from his shoulders.

“You miss him?” Bill asks, voice low and kind. John gives a short nod, biting his lip. He can’t say anything else.

“Shit, John.”

They’re both quiet. No words are coming to John’s mind, his brain is swamped with too much alcohol. He’s tired and closes his eyes. Immediately the world tumbles off its axis, like a child’s brightly-coloured too-light ball tossed around by the waves of a stormy sea. John quickly opens his eyes again, already swaying.

“Guess I’ll go home now,” John murmurs, trying not slur. He suddenly wants to curl up in his bed, pull his duvet over his head; sleep and forget.

“It’s barely eleven. You sure? I can walk you home.” Bill puts a hand on the back of John’s arm, keeping him steady.

“It’s okay. Thanks. See you, Bill,” John says and slowly turns to the living room door.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, John.”

John flashes him a grateful smile. He feels lighter. He forgot how good this feels.

On the way home he stumbles through dark streets, the asphalt glistening with cold rain in the too-bright light of the street lamps. He’s nauseous again, really fucking nauseous. He’s going to throw up, and it’s going to wreck him. He hates it. He makes it to a dark patch between two street lights, holding on to the fence. Sour vomit still burns in his nostrils when he climbs into bed later. He’s still drunk. He still misses Sherlock so fucking much. He’s still fucking heartbroken, but he’s a little less lonely now.

John sleeps in stretches of either restlessness or black unconsciousness, too thick and heavy to even dream. The first thing he realises when he wakes is that he’s cold; he must have opened the window just before he went to bed. The next thing he understands is that he’s epically hungover and exhausted, neither his head nor his stomach have forgotten about the beer or the wine or the vodka. He rubs his face, then slowly gets up, his limbs feeling like lead. Last night’s anger has vanished, and without it, John feels defenceless. Talking to Bill has changed things, or maybe the drinking and puking has. The last thing he notices as he closes the window, blinking against a clear morning sky, against its patches of bright blue and sunshine after last night’s rain, is the small spark of relief and warmth inside him. He wonders if it has always been there, underneath all his despair, or if that, too, is because he talked to Bill.

He takes a long shower in an attempt to wash away his hangover and the all-over sticky, grimy feeling, the lingering taste of alcohol in his mouth. He probably can’t eat just now, but he craves tea, and goes downstairs to the kitchen.

John doesn’t hear his mum enter the room, but when he puts his mug with hot tea on the table, she’s there. She combs a hand through her hair, still untidy from sleep. She’s wearing her old flannel dressing gown. Sometimes when John was upset as a child, he used to run to the bathroom and bury his face in its soft fabric, imprinted with the scent of her. He misses this wordless, uncomplicated kind of comfort; he doesn’t want to talk, to explain why he’s so unsettled or why he’s hungover. Right now, he doesn’t want to be an adult.

“Good morning, John.” His mum smiles as she walks past him to take her own mug out of the cabinet. John feels her gaze on him.

“You weren’t out long last night,” she says as she sets the kettle to boil.

John clears his throat. He’ll sound like shit now, raspy and, in fact, hungover.

“I was tired.”

There’s a soft _flap_ as his mum puts a teabag into her mug, and the cutlery clatters when she opens the drawer to get a tea spoon. “Wasn’t the party nice?”

“No, it was good. It was just — me. Tired.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, but keeps stirring his tea.

“You used to go out more.” She pours water into her mug, then opens the fridge, takes out the milk and adds it to the tea.

“Yeah,” John shrugs. If he was in a better state, he’d go back to his bedroom and put an end to this conversation. But then his mum sits down at the table and looks at him, and suddenly leaving turns into an act that would require an explanation of itself.

“John, what’s wrong?” She holds him with her gaze. Often she has a lot of other things to take care of, enough that during the last years, John has had liberties most of his friends did not have, just because she had to work and he and Harry’d had to look after themselves. But whenever he is the focus of her attention, there’s no escape, no tricking her.

Nonetheless, John tries. He has to try. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

He stops stirring his tea, suddenly it’s too loud. His mum keeps watching him, and then says calmly, “You’re miserable, John. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Last night, Bill said almost the same thing to him. John furrows his brow, firmly looking at his mug, at his hands. He has to think of Harry’s hands, how she held his on the morning at the campsite, when he was hungover, too. When he told her about everything. He kneads his hands.

“John, talk to me.”

His mum just sits there with him, waiting, listening even though John doesn’t say a word. They sit for a long time. John lifts his head, staring at the ceiling. It’s supposed to look exasperated, and to hide the tears that are pressing up behind his eyes.

He has to think of Bill. He stood so close to him last night, waiting until John was ready to speak. John feels words form in the mess of his mind, not sentences yet, and barely even an intention.

“John.”

It’s her voice, the way she says his name. It holds the promise of getting this off his chest, of burying his face in her arms and hiding like he did when he was a child; infinitely safer and more comforting than just traces of the smell of her skin and her shampoo preserved in her dressing gown.

John’s heart beats fiercely against his chest, and his stomach twists. He’s so tired of keeping things bottled up and the temptation to just _talk_ is so big. He realises how much he misses Harry, and he wishes Bill was here now. The ones who know him, and who understand him, even without wordy explanations. He glances at his mum, feels fragments of things he could say almost at the tip of his tongue, then swallows them down quickly.

It’s a bit like throwing up. Like that moment when he’s so nauseous that he can’t focus on anything but his body anymore. That horrible feeling deep down in his throat, tickling at his gag reflex, and the cramping revolt in his stomach. When he isn’t quite ready to accept it just now, the whole mess that will follow, the turmoil of turning his insides out— And then the moment when he finally surrenders and holds on to something with clammy trembling hands or kneels down, because there’s no other way out of this than fucking doing it and getting it over with. The way he braces himself and it still turns his legs to jelly and puts cold sweat on his forehead.

John looks down and grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment. He tries to swallow down the lump in his throat, and says, slowly, “I… fell in love, mum.” He swallows again. “In France.”

His mum listens. She’s completely calm, and there’s nothing else that matters to her now but John.

“I — I —” It’s pathetic, he’s stammering. He tries to avoid personal pronouns and names; he tries to figure out a way to spare her the shock of learning that it is not about a girl, but there is none.

John needs another moment, another breath, another nervous stroke of his thumb across his own skin until he can go on.

“I miss him so damn much,” he finally whispers.

He glances up quickly, just in time to see something flicker across his mum’s face, but it’s gone before he understands it, and she looks just as she did before.

“Him?” she asks quietly.

“Him. Sherlock. I — I miss him. I miss him so much.” John’s throat is tight and he barely gets out a sound.

“He’s a boy, John?” she asks, and John hears the care, the caution in her voice. He nods.

“His name is Sherlock?”

He nods again, because that’s all he can do as he hears her saying his name. It feels so real, he wasn’t prepared for it. It feels better, although it fucking shatters him, fills him with a light panic when he understands that now he can’t take it back, now his mum knows. He only told her so little, but now she knows that he’s attracted to men, maybe she already knows that he’s had sex with him. Suddenly he grasps that there are people who actually find this wrong, filthy, monstrous.

She’s still waiting. When John doesn’t add anything, she asks, like a gentle poke, and making clear that she isn’t one of those people, “You want to tell me about him, John?”

John presses his lips together, feels them tremble and pull into an odd grimace of trying not to cry. _ Oh God, mum, do you really want to know? Really? And — what is it that you want to know? _

“He’s my age, and he lives in London.” He can see the questions in her eyes. He isn’t able to face them, not now. So he tries to give her a few answers, hoping that for now, this will do.

“It took me a while to understand, I — I —” John looks down at his hands, kneads them hard. “It’s not like I’ve been in love with a boy before.”

He clears his throat. “Harry saw it. That I was falling in love with him. She talked to me. She was amazing, mum, really.” He briefly meets her eyes, but he doesn’t have the strength to examine her reaction, her emotions. Instead he goes on in a stutter of words, “and then — we were just constantly together. Always, uh, I mean, two weeks or so. I — I miss him. So much.”

He thinks of Sherlock in his sleeping bag, curled up and asleep in John’s old tent. Sherlock had been so happy, and John too. He blinks against the tears in his eyes.

“He’s so clever. He’s fucking beautiful. He’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.” He exhales shakily.

“Is it the boy in the photographs? The ones that under your bed?”

John thought she hadn’t noticed, but she must have, on that day when he hadn’t put them back. He trusts her not to snoop around, she keeps out of his room most of the time. But — she saw the pictures.

“I saw them when I put your rugby clothes on your desk after washing them, John.”

John crooks a broken smile. _It’s okay, mum. _He clears his throat again.

“Yeah, that’s — that’s him.”

He can’t look at her. He takes the mug of tea into his hands, feels it warm him. He takes a sip, sweet and hot and milky, and keeps his eyes fixed on the mug as he speaks.

“We came back from France together, on the train. When we — when we got off the train in London, he said—” he forces himself to repeat Sherlock’s words, but his voice fails him, and he whispers, “he said it was over.” He presses his mouth shut for a moment, then draws in a long breath. “He just split up with me, and I don’t know why. I don’t understand.”

“Can you call him?” his mum asks quietly. John glances at her, he’s relieved that she isn’t judging him, has barely even asked anything; instead she's trying to find a solution.

“I don’t have his number,” he admits, briefly meeting her grey eyes. “Don’t even know his surname.” This makes him sound like a fool. “I’d given him mine, so he could call me that night, and then I hoped we'd talk about when we’d see each other again and… about how to go on.” He puts the mug back on the table, suddenly afraid he might drop it. “I’m such an idiot, mum.”

When John looks at her again, longer now, he can see all her compassion, and he can see that her eyes are wet. It’s true what Harry told him — she doesn't mind that he is — waswith a boy. He swallows, tears of gratitude welling in his eyes. She’s the best fucking mum he could ask for.

“John, love, you’re not an idiot. You’re very much not an idiot.”

Now tears start to fall from John’s eyes, run down his cheeks, drop from his jaw onto his t-shirt. He bites his trembling lips to keep himself from crying.

“I fucking am.” He sniffs, it’s a pathetic sound, and he wipes the back of his hand across his upper lip. “I fucking miss him. It’s tearing me apart, mum.”

He sinks into the chair and starts crying, barely making any sound except for sharp hisses of breath. It’s just like that first night after they came home from France, sobs breaking him from the inside, dragging all his pain up to the surface. He’s shocked by the sharpness, the intensity of it. He didn’t know it could still hurt this much, even after all these weeks. His mum gets up and sits down on the chair next to him. She doesn’t say anything, but reaches out her hand and offers it to him. She lets him take it whenever he’s ready. He threads his fingers between hers the moment he sees it.

She squeezes John’s hand gently, then takes a breath, shifts closer and pulls him into a hug. He sinks against her shoulders, presses his face into the worn cotton of the dressing gown, feels the warmth of her body on his skin. He tries to stifle a sob, but she notices, of course she notices, and brushes a hand across his hair, shushing him.

They both jump at the low noise at the front door. It’s the sound of a key being turned in the lock, of the door opening and falling shut a moment later.

“Mum? John?”

It’s Harry, coming from Portsmouth to help them pack their belongings into boxes and bags, everything that has been in this house for as long as John remembers. Again John’s mum squeezes his hand, but doesn’t let go. John listens to the familiar rustle of clothes as Harry hangs her jacket on her hook next to the door, the rubber thumping of her shoes being taken off. Soft socked steps sound in the hallway, and then she’s at the kitchen door, pushing it open with a low creak.

“Hey Mum—” She stops abruptly as she spots them, then enters the kitchen carefully. “Is everything alright? Johnny?”

John pulls back and out of the hug a little. He looks up at Harry, hoping his voice will work. “Hi. I — I’ve told mum about—” There are more tears, and another sob. _Fuck, why do I always cry now._ “Sherlock.”

Harry’s face crumples with emotion, then she flings herself around the two of them in a tight hug.

“Oh Johnny,” she breathes into his ear, “oh Johnny.”

They hold each other for a long time in that awkward position, Harry standing, John and his mum sitting, but it works. It feels good, and John closes his eyes.

Eventually, Harry lets go of him, wiping tears from her eyes. She makes herself a mug of tea and sits down next to John. Slowly, they start to talk about their time in France, playing the thread of the conversation like a ball between them, lightly, carefully. Then with more emotion, bouncing it back and forth, smiling, cracking tender jokes. They talk about Sherlock, too, about the time they all spent together — Harry, Gemma, John, Sherlock. It makes John sad, so sad. But his relief is bigger than that. Their mum doesn’t ask much, she just listens, all the time, to everything her children have to say.

When finally they run out of words, tired from emotion, the kitchen feels like a different place, with three people slightly different from those who came here earlier. It has done something to them, talking. Harry pulls John into another sideways hug as she gets up, his mum takes his hand and squeezes it, and then they get to work and sort through the things in the living room. John walks upstairs and sits down at his desk, gets out his schoolbooks and starts to study. Sometime in the afternoon, his head starts to ache with all the words he's read and underlined and written. He’s hungry and incapable of focusing any more. He goes back downstairs, eats four slices of bread with Nutella as if he’s starving, and then helps Harry and his mum pack.

They put books from the shelves into cardboard boxes, trying to decide on what to keep and what to give to charity. They talk, and eventually the holidays in France come up again. Compared to Harry’s brief report on the night they came back from France, everything they tell their mum now is much closer to reality, much closer to what those three weeks felt like. In spite of everything they tell their mum, both Harry and John evade the subject of Sherlock taking drugs. They don’t mention exactly how much alcohol they had at the campfire, either. They talk about Eddie and James, about Eddie’s accident and how John helped him. Their mum is impressed; although she doesn’t say it, John sees the way she looks at him. A few times, when he or Harry mentions Sherlock, John has to swallow tears. He’s raw and exposed; every single one of his emotions is laid bare now.

Sometimes John just sits on the floor and watches his mum and Harry. Now that Harry’s moved out, that his own leaving home is within reach, he mourns her not being around more than he did before. And this day, the way they talk — it brings them closer together, back to how they were in France.

The phone rings in the hallway, and John answers it. It's Bill calling, just as he said he would.

“Hi John. So, how are you?” Bill asks tentatively.

“Guess I’ll never have vodka again,” John groans, scratching his head. He feels like a fool thinking about how he behaved last night, venting his frustration out on Bill.

Bill laughs. “Told you that was too fast and too much.” There’s a small pause. “And apart from that?”

“I’m okay,” John says, realising that he is. He feels shaken and vulnerable, both heartbroken and deeply relieved, but okay. “My sister’s here, helping us pack and stuff.” He falls quiet for a moment, then adds, “and I — well. I told my mum. About — about everything, you know.”

“’Kay. How did it go?”

John huffs a small laugh. “Good,” he says quietly. “Better than good, actually.”

John hears a smile in Bill’s silence, and it’s still there when Bill aks, “see you on Monday then?”

“See you on Monday, Bill.”

In the evening, Harry and John make spaghetti and later on, they watch all Red Dwarf on BBC2, all three curled up on the sofa with bowls of ice cream. He falls asleep under the woollen blanket long before the episode is over. When he finally goes to bed, he feels quiet; sleep has soothed some of today’s emotions. He’s still sad. But as much as losing Sherlock hurts, it doesn’t threaten to crush him anymore.

The next morning, John’s mum is already in the kitchen making breakfast when John enters, hair still damp from the shower. Harry’s upstairs, occupying the bathroom as soon as he left it.

“John, did you…” his mum starts slowly as they lay the table together; searching for the right words and the right tone. The way she takes a deep breath makes John look up. “Did you — and Sherlock — use condoms?”

“What?” John blushes, stumbles and drops a spoon on the floor. He didn’t see this coming. He clears his throat, and, picking up the spoon, tries, “I — I — _well,_ Sherlock hadn’t — he hadn’t exactly had— before me, that is—”

He blushes even harder and holds his breath. He glances at his mum, and her ears are bright red, too. They shouldn’t have to talk about this, why the fuck did she bring this up, he’s really old enough to take care of this himself—

“I want you to do a test, John.” She sounds as if she just jumped off a cliff and is now collecting herself, and wondering how to persuade John to do the same.

“What? An AIDS test?” John asks louder than he wanted. He takes a sharp breath and blurts out, “But I’ve always used condoms with my girlfriends and he—” He rubs a hand across his face. This is already more than he actually wanted to say.

“We did use condoms, mum,” John groans after a beat of painful silence. _Oh God._ He didn’t anticipate this kind of talk and he really, really doesn’t want to have it.

“Always, John?” She looks at him questioningly, but kindly.

“Mum, I — really.” He closes his mouth, opens it again.

“John.” She cuts him off and very calmly, although he can tell she’s fighting to remain so calm, repeats, “Please, do a test.”

_Jesus Christ, how is she always so practical, _ John thinks, _ so fucking pragmatic. She always takes care of the important things although she must be freaking out, too. _

She meets his gaze and quietly adds, “And ask him to do one as well. I’m sure it’ll be negative, and the next time you see him, you'll know that things are okay.”

John exhales. The awkwardness and tension that have charged the kitchen deflate immediately. His now familiar sadness pushes back in, grey and heavy like the autumn fog that doesn’t lift for days, and it suffocates everything else.

“I don’t think I’ll ever see him again, Mum,” he whispers.

“Please, Johnny. Do a test.”

John looks at her, and just nods.

That night, after Harry has left for Portsmouth, and his mum has turned in, too, John lies in his bed with his mind wiped empty after all the talking. By now he must have made up for his silence of the past weeks. He looks into the familiar darkness of his bedroom, where he can find everything blindly if he stretches out his hand or if he takes a few barefooted steps over the battered old carpet. He knows every sound, every groan of this house that he’ll leave in a week.

There’s a fine thread of panic pulling at his stomach when he thinks of all the things that are happening right now, everything that is changing. Things are different with his mum now, and with Bill. He’ll move, he’ll finish school, he’ll go to med school. John exhales and closes his eyes, and after a moment of deafening quiet, images of Sherlock flicker across his mind. John sighs, and then starts to talk to this night-haunted version of Sherlock. Even if John says none of it out loud, he knows how his voice would sound; raspy, whispery, carrying a small tremor of emotion.

_ I love you, Sherlock. But now I need to get through this fucking exam tomorrow morning and through the exams after that. I need to get through leaving this house and the whole move, and I need all my energy for that. I love you, Sherlock, and I miss you, and I’ll come back to thinking of you for a while when this week is fucking over. For now, please let me sleep. Please. _

John exhales, brushes his hand across his forehead, just how he imagines Sherlock would do, and falls asleep.

The next week is a rush. The first exams, maths and biology, go well, and John is relieved. But he knows that he has accomplished something far more important: He talked. He told Bill and his mum about Sherlock and about himself. He’s calmer now, lighter, and in spite of the stress he has with the exams, he sleeps better. After all those weeks, the pain of losing Sherlock eases and becomes bearable. Sometimes, when the excitement and pride of being in love lighten up inside him, he wants to tell them more. It’s usually followed by a feeling of tumbling into a vacuum when he remembers that Sherlock’s gone, and that John won’t ever have any of this again. He grinds his teeth then, takes a slow breath. _ I can go to med school. I can go to med school. Things will get better, at some point in time. Maybe they already are. _

John’s mum is busy packing and working, and John doesn’t see her much. On Wednesday morning, they have a hasty breakfast together. John puts his bowl into the sink, then stops.

“I— Mum, er, about the test. The AIDS test.” John swallows. From the corner of his eye, he sees his mum put her toast down on the plate again. He forces himself to look at her. “I think I’ll do it during the holidays. This week, with the exams at school, I don’t know how to squeeze it in.”

He doesn’t ask for her permission or her approval. It’s more difficult than he’d expected not to add, _that okay for you, Mum?_ But the AIDS test is his decision to make, it’s his life, his responsibility. Even though he does want to tell her.

“That sounds good, John.” She nods, holds his gaze, and finally smiles. John smiles back.

Chemistry on Wednesday proves to be doable, English literature on Thursday is a mess, and he has no idea how the last exam, physics, might turn out. When he gets home after school on Friday afternoon, at the brink of two weeks of autumn holidays, he’s sure he can’t even write one more word, can’t think one more thought. He slumps down on his bed, has a long nap. Later, when it’s getting dark already, he goes and sees Bill.

They talk a bit; they haven’t talked about anything but school and exams all week. John watches him, checks if he’s any different with him, knowing that John has been together with boy. But Bill behaves just like always. John’s relieved, and starts to ease up. The idea of kissing him doesn’t come up again. _Must have been the alcohol and the whole mess._

They talk about John moving to the new flat, about med school and rugby training. When Bill brings up the topic of Sherlock after a while, John doesn’t mind.

“What’s his name, John? Of your ex — is that okay? Ex-” Bill pauses, and adds, “boyfriend?”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” John replies. “Sherlock. His name’s Sherlock.”

“Weird name.”

John hums. “Mmh. He’s… unusual.”

“Can I — just ask you a few things?” Bill meets his eyes.

“Yeah, sure.” John nods. He’s calm, he’d never have thought so.

“Is it different? From girls, I mean?” Bill asks. He sounds genuinely curious.

“Yes, I — I guess so? I mean, he’s taller than me.” John clears his throat, not sure how much Bill actually wants to know. He thinks for a beat. “The main thing was that I just — I was so fascinated by him, and so, uh, in love. I never felt like that before. That much. For another person.”

John has to think of how he and Sherlock sat at the bench, smoking, looking out at the sea. It had been the best.

“Sounds like it hit you really hard,” Bill states.

John laughs, shrugs. “Yeah. Absolutely.”

“So it was good?” Bill asks. John doesn’t quite know if he refers to being in love with Sherlock or having sex with him. It doesn’t matter.

“It was. It was amazing.”

“Good kisser?” Bill asks, smile turning into a grin, a little awkward.

“God yes.” John’s grinning too, now, and blushing, but he doesn’t give a shit. With Bill, he doesn’t have to hide.

Bill nudges his shoulder, then stretches and suggests, “I could come and help with the moving.”

“Would you do that? That would be cool,” John says. It would be really good to have Bill around.

“Yeah, sure. When are you getting started?”

“Monday morning. My mum’s rented a van.”

“Ah, shit — it’s my brother’s birthday on Monday and promised I’d be here. What about Tuesday?”

John crooks a smile. “Guess there'll be plenty left to do on Tuesday, too.”

When John leaves the Murrays’ home, he feels actually something resembling _good_ for the first time since France.

It’s dark as John rides home on his bike, thick rain clouds hanging low in the sky like massive, graphite sculptures. The first cold drops fall as he turns into their street, and by the time he rides down the narrow path through their front garden, the rain has started to soak through his clothes. He pulls his hood down over his face, a gust of wind pushing him closer to the house and the rain getting stronger by the minute. He leans his bike against the grey wall of their house, next to the front door, just like he has ever since his dad first taught him how to ride a bike at age five.

It’s weird coming home now, when they’ll be moving in a few days. About half of their things are already packed, and it feels like a lot. His mum asked John, called Harry, if they still needed these old books or those old toys they hadn’t touched in years. Neither of them had missed them, had completely forgotten about them. Their mum gave away clothes they’d outgrown years ago, and she threw a few things away, stuff no one really needed any more. After all, the new flat is small, and in a year’s time it will only have to be big enough for her alone. All this felt strange, and pinched with sadness. As if they were dismantling what was left of his childhood.

His mum had packed the remaining things into brown cardboard boxes and labeled them neatly. They say _Harry_, or _living room/books_ , or _photo albums 1975-1985_. They'd sold some of the furniture they won’t need in the new flat, and given some to Oxfam. Harry is going to take a few things to her place in Portsmouth. She and Gemma can’t afford a lot of new furniture, so they’re grateful for everything they don’t have to spend any money on.

Harry will spend this weekend with him and their mum, too, helping and picking up the things she needs. With many things packed or gone, the house looks empty. Now, there’s only the furniture they’re going to take to the new flat, and the boxed-up things they’ve decided to keep. Everything feels different; his steps echo in the almost-empty rooms. It doesn’t feel like home anymore. John thinks about the new flat, empty and bare, not feeling like home yet. John’s not sure if it ever really will.

John is shivering as he fishes his keys out of his jeans pocket. There’s light shining through the window, turning the house into a lighthouse in the storm. He tries to detach himself from this house, but he knows he’s failing. Leaving it reminds him of his dad moving out years ago. He tells himself that a new family will live here, a happier one, hopefully. He doesn’t know why his dad comes up again, it’s been years since he’d left, and John had been done with it. Especially since Sherlock had told him that none of what had happened had been his fault.

John opens the front door. The lamp on the ceiling bathes the hallway in warm yellow light. He's always loved coming home when it’s dark outside; their house has always been bright and welcoming, has always smelled good. Harry’s bag sits on the floor in the hallway, so she is home already. _Home,_ John thinks. _As long as it still is our home._

“Hey Harry,” he calls, surprised by the way his voice is resounding. The naked walls and half-empty rooms reflect the sound in an unfamiliar manner. He puts his wet jacket on his hook and drops his keys on the telephone table. Their mum is at work and won’t be home until midnight.

“Hey John,” Harry replies from the kitchen, probably preparing dinner. John vaguely notices that she sounds a bit off, but before he can give that any further thought, he's already opening the kitchen door.

And then he notices a number of things at the same time: Harry’s isn’t preparing dinner, and she isn’t sitting in her chair either, in her spot at the kitchen table. She’s standing, leaning against the kitchen counter, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Her lips are pressed tightly, a crease of worry between her eyebrows. The atmosphere is fucking tense. She’s listening, she’s in the middle of a serious conversation.

He looks to the other side of the kitchen table, and the air is pressed from his lungs. Within a fraction of a second, within the thousandth part of the thousandth part of the timespan between two heartbeats, every memory of every single detail he thought he’d lost rearranges itself in John’s mind. Everything finds its way back into John’s consciousness — the space between eyebrows and forehead, every rumble and creak of his voice, even the pattern of freckles on his neck and on his shoulders. The touch of his lips, the softness of the skin under his belly button, the way he gestures as he speaks, his gait, his pattern of breathing, the scent of his skin. It’s all real, and it’s all there.

Sitting at the kitchen table, in John’s chair, is Sherlock.

Sherlock, still wearing what must be his winter jacket, scarf still wrapped around his neck, still wearing his shoes. His backpack sits next to him on the floor. His shoulders are hunched, and he looks tired, pale, even gaunt. His hair is longer and darker than John remembers. When Sherlock looks up and meets John’s gaze, John finds sadness in his eyes, alongside too many other emotions that he can’t decipher.

John’s stomach is tumbling, falling; he takes a step back, shoulder bumping against the door frame. Sherlock’s here.

John gets hard just thinking about it. He groans, his voice throaty, breaking from sleep. Lying on his side, Sherlock is spooning him, his arm slung around John’s waist. His nose is buried in John’s hair, as if its scent helps him sleep. Both naked, the feeling of Sherlock’s skin is the fucking best in the world.

The tent’s polyester fabric gleams bright blue with morning sunshine, casting patterns on their skin. John listens to the soothing, ever-present whisper of the ocean, the cries of the seagulls and the wind’s gentle caress in the pines. He has come to love these sounds, and for a split second he wonders what waking up to the silence of his bedroom at home will feel like. Unease starts to tighten his stomach, and suddenly he’s clammy and cold in spite of the warm summer morning. He quickly pushes the thought away.

Instead, John looks at Sherlock’s hand resting on the naked skin below his belly button. He gently runs his fingers along Sherlock’s index finger, along his thumb, across every knuckle and the soft ridges of the veins at the back of Sherlock’s hand. As John’s thoughts stray to last night again, his relaxed, even breathing gets faster and his hands trembles the slightest bit.

He didn’t just imagine or dream it, did he?

_Next time, John, next time I want you to fuck me._

No, it really happened. John can still hear Sherlock’s voice, broken and ragged and out of breath. He vividly remembers how fiercely he came after hearing the words, unable to believe what Sherlock had said. Everything they did last night was fucking incredible. John lifts his hand to his nose and smells his fingers. He finds the scent of Sherlock there, slightly muskier and headier than usual, but, after all, nothing but Sherlock.

John’s breath hitches recalling how he touched Sherlock last night, and he exhales sharply, feeling the huff of breath cool on his skin. The tent seems to be getting warmer by the minute.

Sherlock wants to sleep with John like — like that. He wants John inside him. Fucking hell.

John swallows hard. He‘d had no idea he’d want this so much himself, that it would suddenly mean so much to him. That he’d crave it with every fibre of his being. He can barely wait for it to happen, and yet, it feels like a huge thing to do.

John takes a deep shivery breath, relishing the arousal building in his groin, making his whole body sing with anticipation. Slowly he reaches for his cock.

He bites his lips as he brushes his fingertips across the warm silky skin, relishing just how fucking hard he is, and, Christ, it feels good. He caresses his cock lightly, a sweet, teasing hint of a touch. He just wants to add a bit of sensation to the desire simmering in every cell of his body, but he gasps nonetheless. He wants to draw this out, to enjoy every single moment of wanting and yearning. He wants to feel how much he’s turned on by the prospect of doing this with Sherlock, the prospect of fucking him. He groans, more shakily, just _thinking_ about it.

John closes his eyes and recalls how it felt when he slipped his fingers into Sherlock’s tight entrance last night. He pictures pushing the slick head of his cock slowly against Sherlock’s sphincter, exhaling a helpless, gravelly sigh. He strokes the tip firmly, pretending it’s Sherlock he feels there, and not his own fingers. He fantasises about sliding into Sherlock’s body, feeling how the muscle finally gives way, and the sensation of tight, wet heat. Oh fuck, he can almost _see_ Sherlock lying in front of him, his erection flushed against his belly and his legs spread to let John in. He can almost hear Sherlock breathing hard and fast through his open mouth with his lips all red and wet from kissing. And he can almost see the look in Sherlock’s eyes, just like the one he shot him last night. So fucking open, not holding anything back.

John bites his lips and groans in spite of it, breathing harder now. He vows to himself that he’ll go so fucking slowly when he sleeps with Sherlock. He’ll give him all the time he needs to get used to it, to the way John’s cock feels inside him. He’ll do his fucking best not to cause any discomfort or pain. It has to feel every bit as amazing for Sherlock as it will for him.

Thinking of the orgasm Sherlock had last night, John sighs, a low and desperate sound in the silent tent, and he can’t help but stroke himself a bit faster.

Sherlock stirs behind him. The sleeping bag must have slipped down their legs while they were asleep. It’s tangled around their feet. Now it rustles loudly in the silence of the tent. Sherlock moves, and presses his lips lightly against John’s neck.

Sherlock starts to caress John’s belly in slow, sleepy strokes, following the fine line of dark-blond hair down from John’s belly button with his fingers. When he touches the head of John’s hard cock, he hums, a low vibration in his chest that John can feel with his whole body. Sherlock kisses John’s neck again, and when he runs his finger further down, he finds John’s hand there, too.

“Oh,” Sherlock whispers, and his fingers start searching, exploring what John is doing there. Sherlock laughs, a small, content rumble, and starts to move his hand slowly up and down John’s shaft.

John shivers with desire at Sherlock’s touch, he melts into his arms and against his body. Oh God, it doesn’t need much to make him come, does it?

Sherlock breathes another kiss against John’s nape. He touches him so fucking lightly that John arches into his caresses with a long groan. A moment later, John feels Sherlock lick his neck, warm and wet from his tongue first, then cool when Sherlock’s breath brushes across it. It’s a sensation so light and unexpected that it almost tickles, setting every nerve-ending alight and making John shiver. He’s sensitive as hell on the back of his neck and down his spine.

When Sherlock hums again, John can hear a smile in his voice. And then there are more kisses, soft and open-mouthed, with wet lips and a hint of tongue, conveying enough of Sherlock’s own desire to send goosebumps all over John’s back.

John gasps. He has no idea how it works, but everything Sherlock‘s doing to his neck is intensifying the sensation of his fingers dancing across John’s balls and cock. As Sherlock grazes his teeth across John’s neck, he presses his hard cock against the spot where John’s thighs meets his arse.

John sighs, pushing his buttocks against Sherlock’s groin, and Sherlock’s breath stutters for a moment. He must be far more aroused than John had thought. John does it again, pressing his arse against Sherlock’s cock, making Sherlock tremble behind him once more.

Sherlock strokes John’s cock a little faster. John starts to roll his hips, thrusting into Sherlock’s hand and grinding his buttocks against his cock at the same time. He can tell how this is turning Sherlock on, how he‘s getting harder; the place where his cock is rubbing against John’s buttocks is getting wet. John feels Sherlock’s lips on his shoulder, and an instant later, Sherlock bites John’s _trapezius,_ stifling a moan. John loses himself in the wave of desire that pulses through his body, pushing his cock faster into Sherlock’s slick fist.

Before John knows it, he’s coming. With sudden force, orgasm overtakes him, bathing him in total, breathless bliss, shattering him into shivers and moans.

Less than a heartbeat later, Sherlock’s ragged gasps become erratic. Smearing rough kisses on John’s shoulder, Sherlock licks his skin. He start starts to suck, hard enough to make John’s skin prickle, hard enough to hurt, and hard enough to leave a purple mark. John exhales a wondering laugh once he understands that Sherlock is giving him a love bite. He loves it. All this time, Sherlock’s cock is pushing against the damp skin of John’s buttocks and thighs until Sherlock groans one last time. He comes all over his arse, holding John tight in his arms.

John just lies there, out of breath, with Sherlock’s heaving chest pressed against his sweaty back, and a huge smile on his face.

_I fucking love you,_ he almost says, while Sherlock tousles his long fingers into the damp blond hair above John’s nape. John closes his eyes.

I want to love you in every possible way, he thinks, images of last night still lingering in his mind. And suddenly he needs to know if it is just something Sherlock said while he was drunk on the intensity of a climax, high on the rush of daring to do something he might only ever have dreamt about before. If being fucked suddenly feels too much in the bright light of day.

“What — what you said,” John starts with a dry, raspy voice, “last night…”

“Hmmmm.”

John is sure Sherlock hasn’t even opened his eyes. He knows exactly how Sherlock must be lying, slotted into every curve of John’s body, enveloping him with his longer limbs. They fit together fucking perfectly. Sherlock will have his eyes closed, his face relaxed, the smallest of smiles lingering at the corners of his beautiful mouth, strands of dark hair sticking lightly to his temples.

John watches Sherlock as he stares into the sky. He’s lost in thought once again, and neither of them says anything for a long time. Suddenly John can picture Sherlock on a crime scene, crouched next to a dead body, searching for clues only he can see. John smiles. He has to tell Sherlock some time. But for now he just says, “That book actually is a disaster.”

“Absolutely,” Sherlock laughs, and his laughter is a low, beautiful rumble that John will never get tired of hearing.

They lie there for a bit longer, and John listens to Sherlock predict the whole crime story while they eat the food they brought with them. As time passes, the sound of the waves takes on a tempting note, and John gets restless. They go for a swim, and John closes his eyes and dives, just feeling the cool water streaming along his body, knowing that Sherlock’s right beside him. He’s so at ease in the sea now, he’s become familiar with it. He knows what it’s like on a calm sunny day like this, but he also knows it in the darkness of the night, and he knows some of the secrets it holds. He knows its troubled, windswept waves during a storm, and he’s learned what the ocean looks like — feels like — when you vanish from its surface and allow yourself to sink into its depths.

They spend some time close to the shore where the water isn’t that deep, where they can still feel the sandy ground beneath their feet. Harry and Gemma are swimming, too, and they wave at them from further down the shore. Sherlock tells him things he’s read up on in his book on marine biology. John listens to his voice, watching the water glistening on Sherlock’s skin, on the muscles of his arms, on his shoulders and his back. He spots tiny droplets getting caught in the fine light hair on his skin and in the dip of his navel. He laughs to himself at the sheer fucking beauty of it, and Sherlock stops talking when he catches John’s gaze. Sherlock tilts his head, trying to determine why John’s so happy. When he understands, he laughs as well, barely audible over the gurgling of the waves, biting his lips and looking out towards the glistening line of the horizon.

John licks his lips and vows to himself that he’ll go swimming naked with Sherlock again, sometime in the next few days. But he doesn’t want to swim in the dark of the night, he wants to see Sherlock. It would be the most daring thing he’s ever done, but now that he’s hadthe idea, he can’t take it back, and he doesn’t want to. He’ll find a way to actually do this, although he doesn’t have the slightest clue how yet.

Eventually they swim out further. They swim as fast as they can, challenging each other. When they’re both out of breath and Sherlock has to admit defeat this time, they head back to the beach. They walk across the baking hot sand to the blue linen that shelters their spot, fluttering in the breeze. The towels are deserted, Gemma and Harry still out at sea.

They drop down onto their towels with heaving chests. John feels the rays of the sun warming his cool, wet skin. The water dries on his forearms and shoulders, other places are still completely wet — his nape, the backs of his knees, the crooks of his elbows.

Sherlock turns to sit sideways on his towel and a moment later, he lies down and rests his head on John’s belly again. John feels the water from Sherlock’s hair run down his sides. It isn’t cold, it’s warmed by Sherlock’s body, by his warm blood pulsing through myriads of fine blood vessels in his skin, and by the sun. He hesitantly runs a finger through Sherlock’s wet curls. Sherlock looks up for a moment, smiling at him open-mouthed, breathing quickly.

John’s mouth is salty from the seawater he’d swallowed. He’s thirsty. He props himself up on his elbows, takes their water bottle and drinks. He tries not to move too much with Sherlock on his belly, but it’s fucking uncomfortable. The large plastic bottle is still full, and it’s heavy.

John feels water running down his chin as he drinks. He also feels Sherlock’s gaze on him, following the trickle of water down his neck until it pools in the small dip at the base, between the clavicles. John puts the bottle down gracelessly, thumping it into the sand, and somehow he manages to put the top back on with just one hand.

He remembers the last time water had run down his chin as he drank. He thinks of the way Sherlock touched him that night, how he brushed his thumb across John’s skin, on their way down to the beach, and his heart beats just the way it did then.

When John meets Sherlock’s eyes, a shiver runs down his back in spite of the warmth of the sun. He can see that Sherlock, too, is thinking of all those charged moments between them. All those times when they turned away from each other, not daring to act on the tension they felt buzzing between them. John recalls those sensations of untouched skin in every meticulous detail, and he feels desire and fascination prickling under his skin again.

He slowly licks his lips, catching the last droplets of the water he’s just drunk. Sherlock keeps watching him. He’s taking in the way John’s tongue touches his lips as intently as he just watched the water running down John’s skin. It’s delicious, being watched like this. It’s like the dream John had had a few days ago, like being watched while he was naked in the sea. He’s getting hard in his wet swimming trunks. They’re sticking to his skin and in a few moments’ time they’ll give away his arousal. He forces himself to inhale and watches Sherlock, with his head still lying heavily on his belly, moving with the rhythm of John’s breathing.

Sherlock slowly reaches out his hand and lightly runs two fingers down John’s chin and neck. He grazes them across the millimetre of dark blond stubble, following the path of the water, until he reaches the soft dip between John’s clavicles. Sherlock watches his own fingers on John’s tanned, wet skin, as if he doesn’t quite believe this is real. His touch is a sweet tease — because John knows that it isn’t meant to be one. Sherlock isn’t making a show, he isn’t playing a game. Desire starts to pulse quicker through John’s body.

John swallows. When Sherlock lifts his gaze to John’s, the look in his eyes takes John’s breath away. It speaks of Sherlock’s need to touch him, to be close to him; maybe to understand the minor miracle of how they are this way. Neither of them needs to say a word. They’re going to have sex. Now.

They get up, and John takes one of the towels to casually cover his groin. At the last moment he remembers to wave at Harry to signal to her that they’re going up to the campsite. Better to let her know where they are, before she can’t find them and assumes that they must have drowned.

They walk along the beach to the path up the hill. The sand is hot under the soles of John’s feet, and the sun and the light wind are drying the skin on John’s shoulders and back. Sherlock walks close to him, their hands sometimes touching. John dares to brush his fingers against the palm of Sherlock’s hand for a heartbeat. It’s fucking exciting to do this, with all those people on the beach to see. He wonders how he’s supposed to make it to the tent without touching Sherlock.

John doesn’t look at anyone who crosses their path as they walk up the hill. He wants to take Sherlock’s hand and gently pull him along, urge him to go faster, to show him how much he wants him. But even without holding hands Sherlock walks quickly, understanding exactly what John wants. Because he probably wants the same. The sound of the waves fades as they ascend the steep path, and their breathing gets louder. They’ve never hurried up here like this.

By the time they reach the tent, they’re both slightly out of breath. The moment John goes down to crawl inside, he takes Sherlock’s hand, because honestly, fuck it. He pulls Sherlock along with him, feeling those long fingers thread into his. As soon as they’re inside, they’re kissing. It’s warm in here, the sun’s been shining down on the tent for hours now, heating up the air inside, and colouring everything in the bright blue of the polyester fabric. John barely manages to zip the door of the tent closed.

Suddenly he doesn’t understand how he’s made it through hours and hours without kissing Sherlock. The touch of those plush lips on his own is dizzying, just like the feeling of Sherlock’s tongue and the scent of his skin. He smells like the sea, like sun cream and a hint of fresh sweat. It drives John mad, erases everything from his mind but _Sherlock_.

After the noise of the beach, the constant laughing and shouting down there, it’s surprisingly silent inside their tent. There’s nothing to be heard but their ragged breaths, the sounds of their lips and tongues as they touch, and the rustling of the sleeping bags. The low background swoosh of the waves and the wind covers up the tell-tale sounds of their love-making.

They tumble onto the sleeping mats, and John is the first to lose his balance, pulling Sherlock with him. Sherlock is as hungry for John’s touch as John is for Sherlock’s. He kneels in front of him and bends down, cupping the back of John’s head with his hand, kissing him again. His kisses are daring, needy and untamed, and John feels as if he’s being conquered. He groans, goes down under Sherlock, and lets himself be had.

Sherlock follows him, and John feels his body against his own, hard and heavy and warm. Sherlock starts to grind his hips against John’s, and John gasps when he feels Sherlock’s erection through both their wet swimming trunks. He starts to shove Sherlock’s pair down, but the wet fabric sticks to Sherlock’s skin. John needs both his hands to strip the wet tangle of fabric down his muscular arse and legs.

When Sherlock’s finally naked, John grazes his fingers across the small of his back and his buttocks. His skin is cool and damp where his swimming trunks were just a moment ago.

Sherlock sits back on his heels and, God, Sherlock’s naked body is a marvel to look at. For the first time, John notices the different tones of Sherlock’s skin. He has never quite realised how much of a tan Sherlock actually has — he’s still lighter than John and most other people at the beach. But his whole body has taken on a light shade somewhere between copper and gold, and his freckles have grown slightly darker. His swimming trunks, though, have preserved the delicate white of what his skin must look like in winter, a beautiful contrast to the dark hair above his cock.

His cock. John swallows. Sherlock’s hard, and that, too, is something so beautiful and so hot that it pushes the air from John’s lungs. It leaves him gasping with a heart hammering wildly against his too-small chest, with an erection of his own that is desperate for the touch of a hand, for friction.

“Up,” Sherlock whispers, because he must have read John’s mind, because he’s a fucking genius. He leans forward to John, instructing him to lift his pelvis so Sherlock can try to pull down John’s own wet swimming trunks, sticking as much to John’s skin as Sherlock’s had to his. The look in his eyes is almost too intense for John to stand. His eyes are dark silver, mercury even, and full of want. They are like a huff of hot breath brushing John’s skin, searing it, burning holes right through and piercing it. They get under John’s skin, stripping him bare although he’s almost naked already, although he wouldn’t even put up a fight.

Take all of me, Sherlock, have me, do whatever you want with me, John pleads without saying it.

Sherlock moves, leaning in ever so slightly, and the light meets his face at a different angle. And then John realises Sherlock’s eyes also hold the antidote to the fiery gaze that just consumed him. Sherlock looks at him with silver-blue eyes now, like the ocean at dawn, drinking him in like he’s burning from the inside as well. He looks at him as if he needs John like he needs water and at the same time, he seems to be flowing over with everything that’s happening between them. Just like John does.

Sherlock pulls John’s trunks down. It’s incredibly arousing to finally be naked, and to be seen by Sherlock. To have him see his hard cock, to have him understand exactly how turned on John is by him, how much he wants him.

John trails down a hand to his cock. It’s is getting too much, his arousal is buzzing under his skin like a swarm of bees. He’ll lose his mind if he isn’t touched, knowing that every touch will both take the edge off his desire and fuel it even more.

Sherlock is still kneeling between John’s spread legs, and watches him as John takes his cock into his hand. He just watches him closely for a long moment, taking in John’s arousal with great focus. John allows Sherlock to see him like this; then gives his cock a firm stroke up his shaft and a light squeeze to the head. He loves the way it feels — both the touch of his own hand, and his hard, thick cock under his fingertips. He’s shuddering at his own touch, almost squirming. Sherlock’s chest heaves, and he’s still breathing hard. He looks at him hungrily, and then he goes down on all fours and takes John’s cock into his mouth.

John gasps an incredulous _oh fuck,_ closes his eyes and lets his hand slip away from his erection, because there’s nothing he can do with his own hands that will feel better than the touch of Sherlock’s lips, his tongue or his fingers. Nothing.

Sherlock runs his tongue across the head of his cock and John briefly wonders how he can be so fucking good at it when he basically just started giving head, what, _yesterday?_ He stifles a long, low moan with the back of his hand and surrenders to Sherlock completely.

Sherlock sucks him, it’s delicious, it’s dizzying. He takes him in deep occasionally, then slips John’s cock out of his mouth again, and caresses it with his lips, with his fucking tongue. All the time, he strokes the shaft and balls, and John is incapable of putting a single coherent thought together.

And then Sherlock shifts. John doesn’t understand it at first, Sherlock’s not letting go of his cock, but suddenly it feels different, and he’s turning around. When John opens his eyes, Sherlock’s upside down above him, and his groin is directly in front of John’s face.

Fucking hell. John hadn’t expected this, he didn’t even know that a 69 could be a thing two men do in bed, and he curses himself for his lack of imagination, because this is — this is fucking _it_ for John, right now.

John feels the warmth of Sherlock’s body radiating above his. He runs his hands across Sherlock’s skin, seawater still clinging to every crease and hair. He drags his fingers along the underside of Sherlock’s thighs and up to his buttocks.

He takes a close look at all the unexplored spots of Sherlock’s body, at all these spots that have started to lure John’s thoughts and hands and lips to them. He’s gaping at Sherlock’s balls above him, at the fine light line on the skin of his perineum, and at the dark, dusky pink skin of his entrance. John’s never seen a man like this, from so close, and so — fuck, _everything._ He’s shocked to realise what this is doing to him, how much it is turning him on.

John reminds himself to breathe, because Sherlock’s still sucking him, and draws in a shaky breath. Sherlock’s hard cock is right above him. John guides him into his mouth, trying to get used to the unfamiliar angle. But the moment he tastes Sherlock’s precome, clear and salty like the ocean, he forgets completely about his craned neck and jaw.

Sherlock groans helplessly against John’s cock when John strokes his tongue against his frenulum. John sucks it lightly, tilting his head backwards to take him in deeper, feeling Sherlock’s rumbling sighs on his own body.

Sherlock groans again, even deeper, and even more helplessly, when John lets Sherlock’s cock slip from his lips, licking experimentally along his balls and perineum. Sherlock’s touches grow more frantic, and he starts to suck John harder.

Feeling Sherlock’s arousal mirrored in his touches to John’s body is maddening. It’s like pouring kerosene onto a bonfire, like setting every nerve in John’s body on fire, and it’s getting more and more difficult to coordinate. He’s teasing and licking Sherlock, sucking him off while his own need to thrust into Sherlock’s perfect, hot mouth is getting near unbearable. He starts moving his hips, struggling to push as gently as possible. He stops working Sherlock’s cock just for a breath, paralyzed by his own desire, by the sensations Sherlock is eliciting in him.

He wonders how this can still feel any good for Sherlock, because by now, John’s too fucking gone to even think about what he’s doing. It must be the sloppiest blowjob ever. Spit runs down his chin and whatever Sherlock is doing there with his tongue on John’s cock and — fucking hell — with his hands grazing across his balls and beyond, John’s about to lose it all.

He’s close, and Sherlock’s movements are growing more and more desperate as well. It’s a mess, what they’re doing, it’s a perfect, hot mess. There’s spit and precome, sweat and seawater, there are low moans and fucking _grunts_, and it’s taking John right to the edge.

For one moment, he lets go of Sherlock’s cock, incapable of doing anything except for thrusting into Sherlock’s mouth. Helplessly, he gasps for air as he feels his climax building inside him. He can’t handle anything else for those rushing and almost unbearable seconds just before his orgasm.

He comes, panting another trembling, low _oh_ against the skin of Sherlock’s thigh and feels himself pulsing into Sherlock’s mouth. _Oh God,_ he groans, and the words resonate with pleasure and bliss as he’s being carried away by his climax. He shivers when he feels the sucking motion of Sherlock swallowing his come.

Once the last shudders have subsided, John takes Sherlock’s cock back into his mouth. He knows that Sherlock’s close, that he’s almost there. He tries to give Sherlock exactly what he needs, and pours everything he has just felt himself into his touch.

Sherlock pushes harder. He slips his hands under John’s arse and holds on to it, and after a few moments of breathless wonder he loses his rhythm and digs his fingers into John’s buttocks so hard it almost hurts. He gasps John’s name and the next second, John’s mouth is filled by his semen.

Sherlock keeps moving his hips, getting slower and but enjoying it until the very last moment, until his legs give out from under him, and he comes to lie down on his side. John slowly lets go of his cock, wipes his mouth and gets up on his knees to turn to Sherlock.

He cradles Sherlock in his arms and holds him tight in spite of the heat inside the tent. He feels the shivers running through Sherlock’s body. He listens to both their hearts beating while Sherlock’s chest heaves against his own. He feels his sweat and his softening cock, pressed against John’s thigh. Sherlock wraps his arms around him in a wordless response.

John kisses him. Sherlock kisses back, still panting into John’s mouth. He tastes like John’s come. He tastes perfect.

They hold each other until their breathing evens. Sherlock buries his head in the crook of John’s neck, and John pours slow kisses onto Sherlock’s beautiful, chaotic hair. Sherlock strokes John’s body, running his fingertips all the way down from his nape to his buttocks. He caresses the spot where he dug his fingers in as he came.

It feels to John like a long time has passed when Sherlock rumbles, with his eyes still closed, “You’ve got a remarkably beautiful arse, John.”

“Oh, thank you,” John grins, and adds, “yours isn’t bad either.”

He’s trying to sound casual, and it doesn’t nearly get close to what he really thinks about it.

“It — it might be actually the hottest one I’ve ever seen, to be honest,” he says quickly, wincing at his poor choice of words. He blushes.

“Oh,” Sherlock replies, his voice full of wonder and pride.


End file.
